Do you depend on your computer for your living? If so, I'm sure you've thought long and hard about which hardware and software to use. I'd like to explain why I use generic "white boxes" running open source software. These give me a platform I rely on for 100% availability. They also provide a low-cost solution with excellent security and privacy.

"Well, how about (a) access to engineers who know what they're talking about, and (b) a guarantee that if a problem can't be solved over the phone, we'll have engineers on-site within an hour for as long as it takes until the problem is solved?"

Although implied by the article, I don't know if it's really fair to compare free OSS support versus paid commercial support. If you need paid support, then pay for it, if free support is good enough, then it's good enough. It probably depends alot on how a particular company feels with outsourcing rather than having staff capable of managing all critical IT operations. Ether way, you can often get unpaid support on proprietary products and paid support on open source ones.